While baby boomers (those born between 1946 and 1964) are starting to move into senior living facilities, the generation still makes up a significant chunk of the American workforce—and they plan to keep it that way. A 2014 Gallup poll (the latest data available) shows that 49% of boomers who still are working say they don’t plan to retire until at least age 66, including 10% who say they never will retire.
Still, boomers are only the third-largest segment of the workforce (29%), surpassed by both millennials and Generation X (34% of the workforce each, respectively); and with 53.5 million millennials in the workplace as of May 2015, according to Pew Research Center, the younger generation represents a significant challenge to boomers for both jobs and workplace collaboration.
So how best to manage baby boomers—and retain their valuable experience and knowledge?
Boomers like to feel valued for their years in the workforce, and think employees should pay their dues, according to The Wall Street Journal. Nicole Charbonneau, chief of nutrition services at San Antonio Military Medical Center in Texas, pairs up team members based on generation—boomers with millennials—but adds, “With the friction between the old and the young, there’s a lot of education of my staff that they’re all foodservice workers.” Educate your boomer staff in expectation management, she says, to help ease communication between the generations.
Whether it’s in regard to recruiting, management or marketing, most advice focuses on how to address some particular demographic, be it millennials or baby boomers. But plenty of people feel like they’re straddling two groups—not quite possessing millennials’ so-called sense of confidence (which some read as entitlement) but loving their #workfamily culture.
Operators looking to build stronger team ties should look for these employees, known as “cuspers,” to fill roles as mediators, Women’s Foodservice Forum speaker Hannah Ubl of BridgeWorks said at the group’s 2016 conference, because they’re able to see two perspectives at the same time.
As the boomer workforce begins to shrink, the younger generation is showing up not just as co-workers; they’re often supervising. Boomers need their younger supervisors to listen and learn—not just charge in and change up the entire operation, says Kaitlin Miller, front-of-house supervisor for Compass Group's Flik at Blue Cross Blue Shield in Richardson, Texas. “I have learned to give respect as well as earn respect with my employees by learning to sympathize with their points of view, morals and treat them with the same respect I would like to receive,” she told FoodService Director.
While millennials and Gen Z are happy to sit down with a tablet and be trained by YouTube, baby boomers have longer attention spans, and prefer traditional methods like PowerPoint presentations and printed handbooks, according to the Wall Street Journal. The same goes for all types of communication—boomers like receiving messages in person or by phone, a format that allows them to immediately ask questions instead of waiting for an email reply.
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